Friends, The war in Iraq has snapped the rope of fate
in new directions, and enough time has passed to understand the nature of its new entanglements. For today, I will comment
on the most burning set of questions I received from thousands of emails concerning how the war and the fall of Saddam might
influence our search for the right candidate for Nostradamus' third and final forewarned antichrist.

What About Saddam Hussein?Saddam
Hussein's rapid fall might indicate he is out of the running. However, at the date of this writing, he is still alive, and
now overseeing a part, if not the leader of, a gathering guerrilla insurrection in Iraq. Death in the near future may yet
see him fulfill the criterion for Mabus in Century 2, Quatrain 62: he soon dies at the onset of the war and his death is a
catalyst for the great destruction of people and animals around the world in a 27-year war of international terrorism.

So far he has missed two assassination attempts by US bunker
buster missiles at the beginning and towards the end of the invasion phase of this war. Saddam could still face death from
a bunker or bungalow busting missile hitting a secret bunker as I described in my 1997 interpretation for Century 9, Quatrain
74 in Nostradamus: The Complete Prophecies. The content of that prophecy will be the foundation of the HogueProphecy
Bulletin I will write when Saddam Hussein is destroyed.

I wish to quote my 1997 interpretation of Century 6 Quatrain
33 for today's theme about the aftermath of the Saddam regime.

His power finally through bloody Alus, He will be unable
to protect himself by sea. Between two rivers he will fear the military hand, The black one will make the angry one
repent of it.

The quatrain implies that Saddam Hussein ("the angry one")
is the man who is "unable to protect himself by sea" (his defenses proved useless against sea-launched cruise missiles both
during and after the Gulf War of 1991). Saddam, the Mesopotamian leader "between two rivers" (the Tigris and Euphrates) who
fears the "military hand" of the West, may also need to fear the hand or power of bloody "Alus," the "black one," who is someone
other than Abu Nidal. He could be a future black-robed Ayatollah from Iran.

END OF EXCERPT _____________________________________________

I would add that the Ayatollah I spoke of six years earlier
might turn out to be the Iranian Ayatollah Khamenei or the leader of Iraqi Shiite Ayatollahs fomenting a fundamentalist Islamic
state in Post-Saddam Iraq.

The BBC news reported the return to Iraq of Ayatollah Mohammed
Baqr al-Hakim from a 23-year exile in Iran. He is considered the most important Shiite cleric of Iraq This Ayatollah recently
made a speech before hundreds of thousands of Shiite followers in Basra, declaring "We want an independent government... We
refuse imposed government...We now have to know our own way to rebuild Iraq, and forget the past...We Muslims have to live
together... We have to help each other stand together against imperialism... We want an independent government. We refuse
imposed government!"

Saddam's sons have been killed. He will follow them shortly.
What transpires in the months or a year ahead is a new insurrection fomented by a black robed and angry Iraqi Shiite Ayatollah.
Whether his anger or US imperialist interests in Iraq are justified only history will tell. Prophecy tells us that a new guerrilla
war is coming. It may not be solely a war waged by those between the two rivers of the Tigris and Euphrates in the "Sunni"
Muslim "Triangle." The vast majority of Iraqi's of the Shiite faith will, for better or worse, choose to establish their own
political destiny without edicts from Viceroys of an American occupation. The Shiites may push aside the Americans if they
do not step aside.

Is Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas) "Mabus"?No question has generated more emails to me than this. I have received and continue to receive thousands of your letters
about the name of the new Secretary General of the Palestinian National Authority Executive Committee's close approximation
to the anagram "Mabus." Both his birth name, Mahmoud Abbas, and PLO code name (Abu Mazen) can fit the rules of letter crunching
anagrams to make "Mabus":

Mahmoud Abbas was born in Safed, Israel in 1932. He became
a Palestinian refugee growing up in Syria after the 1948 Israeli War of Independence. He joined the Palestinian Liberation
Organization (PLO) in the 1950s and received his doctorate in Israeli affairs from Moscow University in 1970. In 1965, Abbas
along with Yasser Arafat was one of the prime founders of Fatah, the radical guerilla faction of the PLO. He rose to a position
in PLO Executive Committee in 1980, and became head of the Department of National (Arab) Affairs in 1984. Ten years later
he refused a post in the Ministry of Palestinian National Authority. In the 1990s, Abbas had shown himself to be a moderate
figure working for a peaceful solution to the Palestinian, Israeli problem. In 1993 he signed the Declaration of Principles
alongside President Clinton, Shimon Peres, Yitzchak Rabin, and Yasser Arafat. He is the architect of the Oslo Peace Accords,
of which he explained to the New York Times in 1993:

"We have come to this point [Oslo Accords] because we believe
that peaceful coexistence and cooperation are the only means for reaching understanding and for realizing the hopes of the
Palestinians and the Israelis…"

By 1996, Abbas became Yasser Arafat's chief deputy, and second
most powerful leader of the Palestinian Authority and his heir apparent. Abbas' consistently liberal and pragmatic approach
has often united moderate Israeli and Palestinian leaders to the cause of peace while alienating the extremists of either
camp. His plan for establishing Jerusalem as a joint Israeli/Palestinian capital has earned him the ire of Fatah and Israeli
fundamentalists alike. Many Israelis believe Mahmoud Abbas walks and talks like a moderate, but this is actually the peace-promoting
façade of a cunning politician advancing his anti-Zionist goals.

Thousands of you are convinced that he is Mabus, however,
I would like to suggest you consider the following.

Sometimes a name seems so close that it must fit. During
the 1990s many people were just as convinced that the US Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Raymond Mabus, was "Mabus." It makes
logical sense. He is named outright, he is influential and he was right in the middle of the tense arena for the expected
(or projected) Armageddon. Perhaps if he had died violently in a terrorist act it might have triggered a devastating US response
and killed a great many "people and animals" as Quatrain 62 of Century 2 implies. Nevertheless, Ambassador Mabus retired in
the mid-1990s from the post without fanfare or prophetic significance.

My initial sense is that Mahmoud Abbas is not enough of an
uncommon and threatening figure to be one of Nostradamus' Antichrists like Hitler or Napoleon. I believe he will be remembered
as a politically ineffectual and weak puppet -- sometimes pulled by strings held by Yasser Arafat, at other times tugged by
strings attached to President Bush. Abbas will be remembered as a weak voice of moderation pitted in a conflict of intemperate
Arab and Israeli people. I believe the majority of Arabs and Israelis are not yet ready or even able to drop the religious,
racial and socially programmed attitudes required to bring a lasting peace in the so-called "Holy" Land.

I do believe Mahmoud Abbas could be a possible candidate
for "Mabus" if he is not intended by Nostradamus as his Third Antichrist but as some victim or catalyst for the actions of
the Third Antichrist. Thus, if Mahmoud Abbas is assassinated, his death may trigger a "great destruction of people and animals"
as the Mabus prophecy implies -- in which case a bloody Middle Eastern war will spread acts of terrorism and counter-terrorism
across the world over the next 27 years.

Follow the Anagram RoadAnother flood
of emails comes from those of you who believe that whoever "Mabus" is he must follow the easy-to-decipher pattern of word
crunching that makes Hitler "Hister" the second Antichrist, and Napoleon "Napaulon Roy" the first Antichrist.

Although "Hister" only requires one letter change, the perception
that "Napaulon Roy" is an easy anagrammatical solution to Century 8 Quatrain 1's PAU, NAY, LORON is a myth.

In Nostradamus: The Complete Prophecies I explained
the mechanics of decoding this anagram for "Napoleon King" in the following way:

"The anagram PAU NAY LORON swiveled once becomes NAY PAU
LORON, and twice, NAPAULON ROY = Napoleon, King. The spelling for Napoleon in Corsican style, Napauleone, is even closer to
the anagram. In a more sinister decoding one drops an N, reverts the U phonetically to Y. The anagram then spells out
the Greek horror of the Apocalypse, Apallyon, the angel of the abyss from Revelations 9.11 or, in this case, the Corsican
horror APAULYON ROY or 'King Destroyer.' This is the man with the 'ferocious name' of 'destroyer' from [Century 1, Quatrain
76]."

It would be more accurate to say that the Mabus anagram has
a fifty-fifty chance of being either a close approximation of the decoded name, such as Hister=Hitler, or it will take some
creative decoding.

Is G. W. Bush now Antichrist Candidate Number
One?The second largest wave of emails since the war in Iraq asks me to consider the American president the prime
candidate for Nostradamus fearsome Mabus after he trounced Saddam Hussein. The reasons provided to me by fans are many and
detailed. I will account the gist of them here for you all in a brief summary.

*

In your many letters the argument for Bush being Mabus relies
heavily on the American president's predilection for unilateralist action. You think an Antichrist should have disrespect
for international law; that he will ignore diplomacy and rush into preemptive invasion of sovereign nations to overthrow their
regimes. To many of you, President Bush is nearly as disparaging and dismissive of the United Nations as the Second Antichrist
(Hitler) was for the UN's predecessor, the League of Nations. Many of you compare Bush to Hitler because in your view he shares
the same penchant for speaking in simplistic absolutes. He sees himself in messianic terms as a savior, force-feeding his
political world view on others by repetitive use of "the big lie." In other words, he propagates a lie so many times that
people begin to believe it, such as Saddam being an imminent because he is aiming a vast array of weapons of mass destruction
at the US. Like Hitler, many of you think Bush followed his big lie with acts of military aggression unsubstantiated by objective
evidence for a just cause.

The more conspiratorial minded among you believe Bush and
the neoconservatives in Washington who prop him up as their spokesman are using the Islamist terrorist attacks of 11 September
as an excuse to consolidate dictatorial power. They exploit a terrorist emergency to dismantle democratic freedoms just as
Hitler did in 1933. When a communist purportedly torched the Reichstag (the German Capitol building), Hitler used this act
as a pretext to rescind democratic freedoms "temporarily-cum-forever" until the terrorist danger to Germany was over. Indeed,
many of you out there say you fear the US president is the front man for a neoconcervative revolution that will lead to an
American brand of Christian Fundamentalist Fascism at home and imperialist adventures abroad. You compare German capitalists
bending the rules to appoint (not elect) Hitler as German Chancellor in 1933 to the questionable way bungled ballots in Florida
and a Supreme Court edict elected Bush to the presidency in 2000.

The near-miraculous lightning war in Iraq followed by a developing
quagmire of guerrilla war has many of you making historic (if at the moment a bit grandiose) comparisons of Bush to Hitler.
Both leaders at the onset of their wars enjoyed miraculous and easy victories only to see the same conquered lands later on
become sink holes of partisan warfare. Some of you predict easy victories in Iraq will encourage Bush to pursue invasions
of Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Iran. Perhaps if more victories come bloodless and initially easy, you think Bush will
even attempt a showdown with North Korea later in his second term. (I believe this showdown may come as early as Autumn 2003.)
All of which will lead to America's economic and social collapse in decades to come by way of the stress of a global Vietnam
Syndrome.

Some of you remind us that the first two Antichrists came
from the Western and Judeo-Christian programmed corner of the world, therefore, why not the Third Antichrist? The Islamic
candidate, Saddam Hussein, turned out to be a little pygmy commanding a shoeless, rust bucket of a Soviet style army, whereas
Bush began his war using the most powerful and technologically advanced armed force of his day, just like Hitler and Napoleon
before him.

Then there are letters coming from those of you who subscribe
to seeing your antichrists in beastly Book-of-Revelation meter. To you, the Antichrist will appear initially as an all powerful
world leader and peacemaker. He rules a superpower or "hyper-power," and wields complete military and economic authority to
wage war or force his idea of peace and economy on anyone, anywhere in the world.

New Agers and Holy Rollers alike share a prophetic caveat
that a future antichrist begins his rule as an apparent bold and benevolent leader. He has the guts to start cleaning up the
world's rogue and terrorist harboring nations if no one else will. He will bring freedom and enlightenment to Iraq, Iran,
North Korea, etc. He will initially be successful and not run into much resistance at first, from home or abroad. His enemies
and critics will be divided and weak, his friends exultant and arrogant, while the majority are cautiously supportive, but
generally in denial of his darker statements and documented plans.

*

I must say, many of your views are very imaginative, though
the Hitler/Bush connection still has a long way to go before it sounds viable. Hitler might use Reichstag fires to set up
a dictatorship, the US Supreme court might appoint an American president, but Bush's war for petrol "lebensraum" is already
overextending his militant reach.

Hitler kept the fuzzy math of his economic policies alive
by exploiting the resources and wealth of conquered nations. Bush Corp has scarcely turned on the spigot to Iraqi oil. The
Vice President's Halburton contractors are too afraid to venture out from their hotels into those oil fields as long as a
handful of guerrillas are on the loose dynamiting pipe lines and rigs. Compared to this timidity Hitler's contractors were
bolder. In 1941, after Hitler conquered much of the European half of the Soviet Union, his contractors fanned across the territories
tearing up and relaying thousands of miles of Russian railroad tracks so they fit the smaller German rail gauge. They did
this contending with over a million guerrillas.

Hitler's Reich for most of its war of conquest enjoyed a
solid alliance with Italy and the Empire of Japan. German soldiers fought side by side with millions of Italians, Hungarians,
Slovaks, Croats, Romanians and the Finns. Bush's "Coalition of the Willing" at present consists of 13,000 English and
1,000 Australian troops. More troops are promised to aid America in its occupation of Iraq in a few months. Among these are
soldiers from the former Axis allies, Hungary and Romania. It is safe to say their contribution will be a few thousand for
the American cause rather than the million they pledged to Nostradamus' second Antichrist, Hitler.

A Nostradamian antichrist worth his weight in dire quatrains
should have silenced domestic opposition. His occupation should have placated the home front with the wealth of exploited
conquests. Does Bush even come close to such Anti-Christian success? The sagging economy and a still potent if hibernating
American voting populace could vote any neoconservative delusion of grandeur out of office in 2004. Did the Germans vote Hitler
out of office after he got them stuck in the quagmire of the Soviet Union?

With that said, it is undeniable that Bush as a candidate
for Nostradamus' Third Antichrist has grown in power and stature since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. We must also consider
the likelihood that Nostradamus intended his three Antichrists to be the personification of three dark steps towards the threatened
derailment of civilization. It could be argued that the root evil of "Anti-Christian" behavior is human stupidity. When we
act like puppets and robots rather than responding to life with enlightenment, compassion, and awareness, we are all a personification
of the state of unconsciousness called "Antichrist." Thus one must consider the third and final Antichrist intended by Nostradamus
may be on the one hand the most powerful of the three and the most unconscious and mediocre of the three. We must consider
the possibility that to qualify as Nostradamus' Third Antichrist he must be a profoundly idiotic and powerful leader who blundered
into -- and was soon destroyed by -- a 27-year war he but could not finish.

Still, the litmus test remains altogether simple. Bush or
any other candidate for Mabus must pass through the following prophetic milestones provided in the text of Century 2 Quatrain
62 and Century 8 Quatrain 77:

1.) He must soon die in the early stages of a war he either
started (if Mabus is the Third Antichrist) or is prosecuting against the Third Antichrist.

2.) The death of this figure early in the war triggers a
27-year reverberation of terror and counter terror around the world.

3.) Indeed it does not matter if Mabus and the Third Antichrist
are one person or two, both fall early in the war, and their fall becomes the catalyst for the closest brush with Armageddon
any of us will ever face, and hopefully avoid

4.) His death as victim of -- or perpetrator of -- the 27
year war of the Third Antichrist causes a great destruction of people and animals on a global scale.

I would add that this destruction could come not solely through
a war he might start. If the Third Antichrist is President Bush then his terrible destruction of people and animals could
come in later decades as a result of his political alienation of the US with the world. It comes though his ill conceived
and shortsighted economic and global policies. Bush will be remembered as the US president who accelerated runaway consumerism,
runaway use of fossil fuels, increased global ecological degradation, ignored the population explosion, and hastened the spread
of global warming -- all key factors foreseen by many seers, ancient and modern, for triggering the derailment of civilization
as early as the 2020s.

Hogue Prophecy Bulletin (22 April 2004)

BLACK SHADOW OVER IRAQ

"The great host and sect of the crusaders,will be massed in Mesopotamia [Iraq]...(3 Q61)Between the two rivers he will fear the military hand.The Black One will make him repent of it." (6 Q33)

Michel de Nostradamus (1555-56)

Friends, An interpreter of prophecy and a forensic scientist
share many things in common. Sometimes they both spend decades tracking down clues derived from sparse evidence to solve a
mystery by trial and error. The forensic scientist may eventually solve a crime, while a prophecy interpreter may at last
grasp a seer's intended vision of tomorrow. Today I wish to review for you a prescient forensic search that has spanned the
past eighteen years-and-counting. It concerns the right interpretation to a famous prophecy about "Alus sanguinaire" (bloody
Alus) and the "black one" in Century (Volume) 6, Quatrain 33 of "Les Propheties" by Michel de Nostradamus. If we can unlock
this 16th-century French visionary's enigmatic clues we just might see what is coming next in America's occupation of Iraq.
Since writing my first book "Nostradamus and the Millennium" in 1986, my intuition has guided me along a prescient theory
that a black robed Ayatollah of the Shiite sect of Islam is the catalyst to the violent spread of Islamic extremism across
the Middle East. Then as now, I believe Century 6, Quatrain 33 (below) points to Iran and the fundamentalist Islamic revolution
of Ayatollah Khomeini as the source:

His hand [that is, his power] finally through
bloody Alus,He will be unable to protect himself by sea.Between two rivers he will fear the military
hand,The black one will make the angry one repent of it.

Back in 1986, Iranian armies under Khomeini's command launched
their largest human-wave offensive against entrenched Iraqi troops in the Iran-Iraq Gulf War (1980-1988). This is what I concluded
about it then. Please note that I inserted the bracketed comments from today:

"Nostradamus called this contender for the third anti-christ
'the black and angry one.' This implication of blackness may relate both to Khomeini's form of dress and his well-known dark
character.

"Further, in the quatrains about 'the black and angry one'
Nostradamus speaks of the one who is the inspiration for an attack across Iraq all the way to Egypt with a force of one million
men, the date being set astrologically for August 1987.* During 1986, Iran boasted close to one million men at the
front fighting Iraq."

["Nostradamus and the Millennium" (1987 edition),
p.128].

*[NOTE: the prophecy displayed by the
side of the text relating to C6 Q33 is C5 Q25, reads: "The Arab Prince...Inclined towards Persia [Iran], Very nearly one million
men will invade Byzantium (Turkey) and Egypt." The astrological aspect is "Mars, the Sun, Venus (in) Leo." The next time the
sun and these planets were in was August 2000. It will happen again August 2019, and August 2032.]

My 1986 interpretation aside, what actually happened?

Ayatollah Khomeini's massed infantry offensive on the approaches
of Basra and across Faw Peninsula ground down in bloody ruin in the following year. Saddam Hussein's dictatorship survived.
The war ended in 1988, and when Khomeini died shortly after, it appeared that the trail to identifying the "black one" as
Khomeini hit reality's brick wall.

The path to understand this prophecy was waylaid by controversy
during the Gulf War of 1991. My publisher at the time (Labyrinth Press) announced their desire to rush a reprint of "Nostradamus
and the Millennium." They went ahead and made an unauthorized cut of my passage about Ayatollah Khomeini. This led to a decade-long
quack attack from James Randi accusing me of dropping the segment on Khomeini because I didn't want to publicize a failure.
Recently, the Las Vegas magic act, Pen and Teller, dug up Mr. Randi's accusation for Showtime Channel's new skeptical inquiry
show, crudely entitled "Bullshit."

If I may, I would like to set the record straight about the
missing Khomeini entry.

I found a new publisher, Element Books, after the legally
binding terms of Labyrinth's contract had ended. Element reinserted my updated Ayatollah Khomeini comments. I might add that
these are the same comments I had planned to insert in the 1991 Labyrinth edition. They appear in my authorized second edition
of "Nostradamus and the Millennium" under the new title, "Nostradamus: The New Revelations" (Element Books, 1994). You can
find my Khomeini commentary on page 184 of that and all future reprints. The most recent, and third, edition came out in 2001
under the new title "Nostradamus: The New Millennium" (Thorson/Element, 2001). This book updates my interpretations as seen
in the new light of events after the 11 September 2001 terrorist attack on America. (See http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0007140924/hogueprophecyc0d).

I want to make it clear that an explanation for my mistaken
Khomeini interpretation has been published and readily available for over ten years. I can only conclude that professional
slight-of-hand-and-intellect artists like James Randi, Pen and Teller base their "scientific" and "skeptical" conclusions
on lazy research and idle skimming through one botched 1991 reprint of my first book. That makes the data for their accusation
more than 13 years out of date.

Here are pertinent excerpts come from my explanation, published
in 1994. I have inserted statements in brackets from today:

*

"In the summer of 1986, I warned incorrectly that Saddam
Hussein might face military defeat in the following year [of the Iran-Iraq War]. I suggested this possibility in the light
of the dating in Quatrain 25, Century 5 of the final Iranian offensive of almost one million men set to overrun Mesopotamia
and defeat the 'Arab Prince' (Saddam Hussein) in August of 1987...Looking back at this interpretation, it can be argued in
my defense that August of 1987 did prove to be a significant turning-point in the war; it was not, however, in Iran's favor...American
covert military actions between August 1987 through July of the following year had the effect of turning the tide o f the
war in favor of Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

"Although the Iranians had unleashed their, initially successful,
final offensive of nearly a million men in the previous year (February 1986), and had seized the Faw peninsula and fought
their way to the approaches to the city of Basra by April 1987, my interpretation that they would overrun the Arab world all
the way to the borders of Turkey and Egypt was a classic example of a prophet scholar's weakness for hyperbolic exaggeration.

"At least for the present time.

"With an increase of arms and intelligence support provided
by the United States, Saddam Hussein was able to push the Iranians out of the Faw peninsula the following year...Ayatollah
Khomeini died in 1988, to be replaced not by another 'black and angry' Shiite mullah, but by the more moderate Rafsanjani
who was to steer Iran away form confrontations...Iraq is poised to break up any time around the mid-90s. By that time Iran
will have quietly amassed an armed force to match that of Saddam Hussein's prior to Operation Desert Storm and may yet fill
the political void by uniting with Shiite Iraqi Arabs to form a new Pan-Shiite state. Although there are now increased numbers
of Ayatollahs supporting more radical Shiite fundamentalism, Rafsanjani's re-election keeps them somewhat at bay till the
mid-90s.

"If the Third Gulf War should take place at that time, Iran's
priests of the Jihad will show the world that they have learned lessons from Saddam Hussein's blunders: Do not take the border
dispute bait before you have achieved the means to arm your regional ballistic missiles, your superguns, and your bombers
with nuclear weapons.

"In a third and final Gulf War, waged during a time of dreadful
astrological aspects, a 'black and angry' Ayatollah could sweep across the Middle East with the sound of jet engines and nuclear-tipped
missiles to do battle with Israel and the forces of the West led by the United States. "

It would appear my predicted date for the fall of Saddam
and breakup of Iraq in the mid-1990s was a bit hasty. Saddam fell in 2003A breakup of Iraq could still happen --my bad dating
forecasts aside. It is believed by US intelligence that Iran is moving quickly to create and arm itself with nuclear weapons
for a future war. The Iranian government denies this. The apocalyptic spread of militant Islam across the Middle East from
Iran to Iraq, then to Egypt and Turkey may be a destiny taking its time. My 1986 interpretation that Ayatollah Khomeini will
physically lead a militant Islamic revolution westward across the Middle East from Iran was a dead end, but a revolution lead
by the myth of Khomeini is still quite alive. Go to southern Iraq and walk through the Shia towns and cities. You will see
Khomeini's grim face, bracketed by his distinctive black turban and robes, posted everywhere. He remains a patron saint and
a rallying symbol for a future militant rebellion of Islam. Is he, or an Ayatollah heir to his revolution invoking his name,
the "black one" or Nostradamus' "bloody Alus"?

I returned to my investigation of Century 6, Quatrain 33
in 1997. It appears in the first complete translation of all of Nostradamus major prophecies since the Leoni edition in 1962.
Here is the prophecy again:

His power finally through bloody Alus,He will be unable to protect himself by sea.Between two rivers he will fear the military hand,The
black one will make the angry one repent of it.

"The quatrain implies that Saddam Hussein ('the angry one')
is the man who is 'unable to protect himself by sea' (his defenses proved useless against sea-launched cruise missiles both
during and after the Gulf War of 1991). Saddam, the Mesopotamian leader 'between two rivers' (the Tigris and Euphrates) who
fears the 'military hand' of the West, may also need to fear the hand or power of bloody 'Alus,' the 'black one,' who is someone
other than Abu Nidal. He could be a future black-robed Ayatollah from Iran."

Six years later, my interpretation of 6 Q33 evolved again in the aftermath of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq.
I wrote the following segment in a HogueProphecy Bulletin for 1 August 2003:

"Saddam's sons have been killed. He will follow them shortly.
What transpires in the months or a year ahead is a new insurrection fomented by a black robed and angry Iraqi Shiite Ayatollah.
Whether his anger or US imperialist interests in Iraq are justified only history will tell. Prophecy tells us that a new guerrilla
war is coming. It may not be solely a war waged by those between the two rivers of the Tigris and Euphrates in the 'Sunni'
Muslim 'Triangle.' The vast majority of Iraqi's of the Shiite faith will, for better or worse, choose to establish their own
political destiny without edicts from Viceroys of an American occupation. The Shiites may push aside the Americans if they
do not step aside."

Unfortunately, my prediction about a Shiite rebellion against
American occupation starting in 2004 was correct. At the end of March, American coalition forces banned a newspaper published
by Ayatollah Muqtada al-Sadr, the leader of a sect of young and radical Shiites. He launched an uprising in a half dozen cities
with up to 10,000 militia from his own al-Mahdi private army, assisted by Sunni guerrillas. So far (22 April) the fighting
has killed 102 US troops and over 1,000 Iraqi civilians and fighters in bloody urban street fighting primarily in Fallujah,
al-Kut and along streets in the Shia slums around Baghdad. US wounded are in the several hundreds.

The Iranian Ayatollah Khomeini never set foot again in Najaf,
the holiest city of the Shiites but a black robed Iranian cleric has lived there for 40 years. A majority of Shias in Iraq,
as well as many in Iran and the world over, acknowledge him as their Grand Ayatollah. I speak of Ayatollah Ali Husaini Sistani.
So far, he has been a moderate cleric, respected even by the administrator of the US occupation of Iraq, Paul Bremer. Sistani's
leads 15 million Iraqi Shias through the practice of quietism. It would be good for the US viceroy and his soldiers not to
believe Sistani's silence stands for acquiescence to US occupation. The Grand Ayatollah wants Iraq to be a democracy, but
he has made it quietly clear that he prefers Iraqis use their self-determination to fashion a democracy that is Islamic in
attitude--not Western American. It is also clear from his polite but pointed statements that he expects the US occupiers to
leave soon after the 30 June deadline--the date when they promise to hand over sovereignty of Iraq to an Iraqi interim government.
Sistani expects national elections will ensue, and the Shia majority will help elect and later dominate a new democratic government
by the end of 2004, or by early 2005.

Sistani lives in Najaf, the most sacred city of the Shiite
sect of Islam, the site of the martyrdom of their founder, Ali, the grandson of Muhammad. It is their Vatican, and in many
ways the Grand Ayatollah, born in Iran, but residing there for over 40 years, is their pope. With Saddam gone, the Shias from
outside of Iraq, from Iran and all over the world, expect Najaf will again become their center of religious pilgrimage, learning
and theocratic power. Sistani patiently waits while younger, more violent, clerics like al-Sadr use violence to accomplish
this dream. They do not have Sistani's blessing in this.

During the Saddam Hussein dictatorship his much revered father,
the Grand Ayatollah Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr oversaw the al-Hawza (the main school of Shia instruction) in Najaf. He became
so popular that Saddam Hussein had him assassinated in 1999. After the fall of Saddam, al-Sadr the son attempted to take his
father's place leading the al-Hawza in Najaf. He did so with an added malevolence his father may have never condoned. The
Aljazeera web site states:

"His followers surrounded the home of Grand Ayat Allah Ali
al-Sistani, an Iranian citizen, asking him to leave the country soon after occupation. This followed the murder of the prominent
Shia cleric Abd al-Majid al-Khoei who had returned to Iraq with US forces after years in exile returned to Iraq."

Al-Sadr the son has neither his father's theological knowledge
or authority, though his passionate oratory has inspired the younger and unemployed followers of his father, many of whom
joined the younger al-Sadr's al-Mahdi militia. Al-Sadr's newspaper, al-Hawza, made it abundantly clear that he rejected the
US occupation and their idea of a provisional Iraqi governing council. He did foment passionate yet non-violent resistance
to the US occupation until US authorities shut down al-Hawza the end of March 2004, alleging it was inciting violence. Mass
demonstrations of al-Sadr's followers ensued until 5 April 2004--the day he concluded that non-violent protest was useless
and urged his followers and militia to "terrorize their enemies."

There is a clear and present danger this rebellion will spread
beyond al-Sadr's small movement and ignite an insurrection across two thirds of Iraq, among the Iraqi Shias. And yet, it may
well turn out that the al-Sadr rebellion in itself will be impotent unless the US forces gathering their tanks around Najaf
should use heavy handed tactics to seize al-Sadr hiding inside the holy city of all Shia factions. Even if the US occupiers
show restraint in the 11th hour, there may yet be a terrible rebellion brewing, beyond their worst nightmares. It could come
from a command or a statement of displeasure from Sistani if he thinks the US forces aren't pulling out of Iraq fast enough
after 30 June.

Even though al-Sadr is not the "Iranian" Ayatollah I foresaw
in the verses of Nostradamus it is a well-known fact that Iraqi Shia militias receive arms and financial aid donated by militant
Iranian ayatollahs smuggled across Iraq's 900-mile border with Iran. This April, the former Iranian president, Rafsanjani,
went as far as praising al-Sadr's uprising, calling his al-Mahdi militiamen "enthusiastic, heroic young people." Ayatollah
Sistani who condemned the actions of al-Sadr also publicly condemned the heavy handed US military response for the devastation
and suffering it caused innocent citizens of Shia towns and cities across Iraq.

The stage is set for the "black one." The names of Ayatollahs
have changed, but the source of their rebellion still leads to my first choice back in 1986, the founder of a militant Islamic
revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini. Back in the 1960s, Khomeini lived in the holy city of Najaf as an exile of the Shah of Iran,
an American backed dictator. The rise of another American backed dictator in Iraq, Saddam Hussein, in the 1970s forced Khomeini
from Najaf into exile in England. There he planned the Iranian revolution that overthrew the Shah and brought his triumphant
return to Iran in the late 1970s. Then came the Iran-Iraq War. Saddam's invasion of Khomeini's Iran faltered, and US supply
of chemicals and expertise for manufacturing weapons of mass destruction and daily intelligence reports from US satellites
aided Saddam's successful defense against Iranian counterattacks. What seemed imminent to me for 1987 was wrong. The Iranian
revolution didn't topple Saddam Hussein, break up Iraq and spread its brand of Islamic radicalism as far west as Egypt as
far north as Turkey. And yet, Khomeini's revolution is still alive and waiting.

It could topple a new government and break up post-Saddam
Iraq, and it could happen and very soon.

An Islamic fundamentalist party rules Turkey at this moment.
For now they pledge to respect and uphold the secular Turkish constitution. What will happen in Turkey if Iraq falls into
chaos, the Iraqi Kurds declare their independence, and the eastern third of Turkey, populated by Kurds fights to secede from
Turkey?

What of Egypt? At this moment the ailing president, Mubarak,
has long and brutally suppressed a volcano of Islamic militancy in Egypt. What happens if Iraq falls into chaos, and Mubarak
should pass away? A Shia rebellion against Western occupation in Iraq might galvanize Egyptians to overthrow the pro-Western
government of Mubarak, or his successor, as Century 6 Quatrain 33 may infer.

Let us again see examine the riddles of "bloody Alus" and
the "back one" framed in the light of volatile events in early 2004:

His power finally through bloody Alus,He will be unable to protect himself by sea.Between two rivers he will fear the military hand,The
black one will make the angry one repent of it.

Line one's "Alus" anagram is rich with decoded potentials
covering both sides of the conflict. The line, "his power finally through bloody Alus," could point to the power a black robed
Ayatollah extremist has rekindled to incite a Shiite rebellion against a draconian occupying force Nostradamus calls "bloody
Alus." A rudimentary use of the laws of anagram easily transforms the riddle "Alus" into "l'usa" (or, "the USA" in English)!

One can also drop the "u" in "Alus" and replace it with an
"i" to imply (Ali S)istani. In that case "his power" stands for al-Sadr's "power" to incite rebellion beyond his own small
movement infecting Sistani's followers "through" a union with the "bloody Ali" Sistani. Taking this farther, perhaps Nostradamus
qualifies "Alus" as "bloody" because he saw visions of Shia men in these parades of devotion ritually slicing their foreheads
and thus bathing their heads and shoulders in blood; or, he saw them flogging their backs to a "bloody" mess while they celebrated
the martydom of their founder, Ali ("Alus").

Line two in previous interpretations stood for Saddam Hussein's
inability to defend himself from US coalition cruise and jet aircraft attacks from the Persian Gulf and Arabian Sea. Given
Nostradamus' predilection to hide multiple meanings in his quatrains, one might also add that the forces of the bloody "l'USA-Alus"
occupation will find their supply lines to the Persian Gulf cut in a future rebellion. If all southern Iraq rose in rebellion
the US convoys strung along hundreds of miles of lonely roads would be under constant attack from Baghdad all the way to the
port of Um Qasir. ("He will not be able to protect himself from the sea.")

Line three describes the "two rivers" of Iraq--the Tigris
and Euphrates. This line first applied itself in earlier interpretations to the "fear" Saddam Hussein felt when pitted against
US forces in the Gulf Wars of 1991 and 2003. A deeper layer of prescient meaning might denote an Ayatollah leading a future
rebellion of Shiites in a far more heavy handed battle to come in the streets of cities across southern Iraq after 30 June.

The "black one" should fear the military hand of the Bush
administration. Iraq will suffer a bloodbath--one that line four implies. One that even a "black" robed Ayatollah as moderate
as Grand Ayatollah Sistani might unleash if he challenges the "angry one"--a frustrated President Bush--to "repent" his escalating
military violence by ordering a general strike and rebellion of 15 million Iraqi Shias.

Nine months ago I wrote the following warning in a bulletin
about a prophecy of Nostradamus related to 6 Q33. I concluded that Century 3, Quatrain 61 described a disastrous future Christian
Crusade in modern-day Iraq:

The great host and sect of the crusaders,Will be massed in Mesopotamia [modern day Iraq]:Of the nearby river the fast company,That such
law will hold for the enemy.

I'll close the bulletin with what I said in July 2003. It
appears more pertinent than ever:

"The final line seen in the light of the 2003 invasion, becomes
more ominous for America. Indeed, a clearer picture arises of just what Nostradamus might intend for the 'law' that will 'hold
for the enemy.' Saddam's dictatorial 'law' survived the Gulf War of 1991 only to be replaced by a new tyranny--the 'Sharia'
law of Shiite fundamentalism.

"The law of the Sharia will hold Iraq because the American
president's preemptive war and occupation is the cataylst. A force-fed Iraqi puppet democracy will radicalize the country.
The guerrilla insurrection will grow in strength long after the US captures or kills Saddam. This insurrection may be the
match setting the fires of a 27-year war foreseen by Nostradamus in his famous 'Mabus' and 'Third Antichrist' prophecies [2
Q62 and 8 Q77]."

[HogueProphecy Bulletin, 11 July 2003, "New
Crusades and Quagmires"]

It would appear that forces
are in motion. Without a dramatic and more thought out Iraqi occupation policy enacted soon, Alus--or "L'usa" (the USA)--will
face a future quagmire in Iraq after 30 June that is very "bloody."

Hogue Prophecy Bulletin (1 May 2004)

IS THE "MABUS" COMET "NEAT"?

Friends, For a few years-in-counting, some of you have
been desperate to get my prescient gut feelings about whether a cosmic disaster falling from the skies will pulverize human
civilization. Since 2001, I have received hundreds of letters inquiring whether Comet C/2001 Q4--better known as "NEAT" from
its acronym for the Near Earth Asteroid Tracking team of amateur and professional astronomers who discovered it--is a comet
foreseen by Nostradamus that will strike the earth in May 2004. Rest assured, I will eat Nostradamus' hat if NEAT even comes
close to planet Earth. Its expected "near miss" in May will be over 30 million miles.

The inspiration for many of your frantic doomsday inquiries
about this comet stem from a book published by Llewellyn in 2001, and authored by R. W. Welch, entitled "Comet of Nostradamus."
Welch may have based this book's theory that a comet would crash into the Aegean in mid-2004 on early--and faulty--trajectory
calculations of astronomers of that day.

Let me reiterate what I said recently about Welch's book
first in an article posted on Whitley Strieber's Unknowncountry.com web site, and later for Strieber's subscriber cyber radio
show "Dreamland" on 24 April 2004. A great comet--be it NEAT or any other that might surprise us unannounced--WILL NOT crash
into the Aegean in mid-2004. This is just another Chicken Little tale fomented at the expense of Nostradamus' prophecies.
I predict that Welch's theory will lay an egg.

It would appear that some of my interpretations of Nostradamus
influenced Welch's cometary disaster theory. Back in 1994, I referenced an interpretation based on several prophecies about
a future comet or meteor strike in the Aegean Sea, off the Greek island of Ebboea. It is important to remember that Nostradamus
NEVER gave a date for this event. There is only one astrological time window openly given by Nostradamus for a cosmic disaster
in the future. Century 10, Quatrain 67 in Nostradamus' book "Les Propheties" describes an apocalyptic rain of hail stones
larger than an egg in May of some future year. The astrological configuration described in 10 Q67 is quite rare. It will take
place in May of 3755! The sky may be falling someday, but not today! We may have to wait for a cometic or meteoric hammer
fall in the Aegean, or anywhere else on earth, 1,751 years from now.

The sky will not fall on us, but in the second week of May
it might illuminate a significant portent Nostradamus foresaw for America, its president, and their future in Iraq. It all
depends on how bright Comet NEAT shines. According to the Central Bureau of Astronomical Telegrams, people in the Northern
Hemisphere in early May will see it rise in the western skies after sunset. It should be at its brightest in the second week
of May, when it transits the constellation of Cancer. Current projections from the NEAT team forecast a brightness of the
first magnitude--about as luminous as one of the brighter stars in the evening sky.

It will not be alone in Cancer when it makes its cosmic statement.
Saturn is there also. Because of this, the passing of NEAT may have far more prophetic significance.

The 16th-century French seer in Century 6, Quatrain 24 of
his magnum prophetic opus "Les Propheties" predicted that a "calamitous war under Cancer" would be fought shortly after the
conjunction of Mars with Jupiter. The most recent conjunction of the two planets took place in June of 2002. America invaded
and occupied Iraq early the following year. America was born under the sign of Cancer, as is its current president. Are they
both marked for calamity? Perhaps the planet Saturn will be the judge. Saturn in predictive astrology is the planet of karmic
payment (that is, reactions that come home to roost from positive or negative actions committed). Saturn is also the ruler
of personal and cosmic reality checks. Resist reality and you will suffer. Accept reality, and Saturn helps individuals and
nations evolve and transcend their negative actions.

Saturn is transiting Cancer since early June of 2003. It
entered Cancer a little more than a month after the Cancerian president Bush declared principal military action in Iraq successfully
prosecuted. He made this announcement with bravado, wearing a Navy flight suit, standing upon a US aircraft carrier flight
deck under the shadow of a sign declaring "Mission Accomplished." There was reason to celebrate. A risky offensive into Iraq
had only cost the lives of 117 US soldiers. America had overthrown an evil dictator, Saddam Hussein.

Then came Saturn into the sign of Cancer a little more than
a month later. Its passing marked the sudden and unexpected rise of guerilla war in Iraq. The Iraqi celebrations in the streets
of liberation from Saddam soon became demonstrations of frustration at bungled US occupation promises, and worse, open protest.
As Saturn's shadow crossed over the birth sign of America and its president, the Iraqi's started calling liberators occupiers
and US casualties steadily mounted after major military action they were told was over. One-hundred and nine US soldiers died
before 1 May 2004. After 1 May 2004, America has occupied Iraq under the aspect of Saturn in Cancer and to date has lost 638
dead and over 3,500 wounded.

Astrologically speaking, Saturn is in its detriment in Cancer.
That means many karmic road bumps ahead for America in Iraq and a rising polarization of the American public into liberal
and conservative camps. The Cancerian president struggles against attacks hurled at his credibility. Saturn, the reality giver,
exposes his grounds for going to war. Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction poised to strike America. Saturn exposes
detrimental revelations about President Bush's decision-making process in one exposé book after another--first from the released
Secretary of Treasury, O'Neil, then a book from a fired national security adviser, Richard Clark. Bob Woodward recently published
an implied revelation that the President makes many of his key decisions more from the instincts of his religious faith rather
than gathered facts from CIA intelligence. The other day, photographs appear showing US male and female soldiers taunting
and torturing naked Iraqi prisoners. The actions shame Americans and enrage the Islamic world. All of this is a product of
the Saturn-in-Cancer effect in the president's and the country's astrology. And it will not be getting any easier any time
soon. Both America and the president have 18 months to endure Saturn's crawl through Cancer.

If Saturn is often seen as a portent of tough times, comets
are believed to be messengers of great and often catastrophic change. Comet NEAT just happens to reach its brightest as it
intersects with Saturn in Cancer from 14 to 17 May 2004. Nostradamus foresaw a comet that marks the onset of his 27-year war
of the Third Antichrist--a global conflict fueled by international terrorism. If that comet is NEAT then it must do more than
shine brightly enough to be recognized clearly with the naked eye of amateur astronomers. It must also produce a cometary
tail significantly dramatic to rival the great comets of the past that anyone other than star gazers could not help notice.
Thus, a bright cometary embrace of Saturn with the Comet NEAT in Cancer could date a descent into calamity for America and
its president in Iraq. A bright comet's tail could light the match of the next world war.

NOSTRADAMUS' COMET PROPHECIES

Nostradamus referred at least ten times in his prophecies
to cosmic portents. What follows is the index number of the prophecy with a short interpretation. For a full examination of
the prophecies and my detailed interpretations, please read "Nostradamus: The Complete Prophecies" published by Element Books--http://www.hogueprophecy.com/ncomplet.htm:

Nostradamus mixed his prophecies out of sequence to hide
their meaning from those who would do worse with our future if they understood and acted upon them. Still, it often happens
that prophecies describing a shared theme end up relatively close together in the ten Centuries (Volumes) of "Les Propheties."
Note how five of the eight direct references to comets concentrate in Century 2. Could they be about one event?

2 Q15--A comet passes when a financial
scandal afflicts the rule of a twin-named pope. The passing of Halley's Comet in early 1986 probably fulfilled this prophecy
when Pope John Paul II endured the Vatican Bank Scandal.

2 Q41--A comet or supernova blazes for
seven days during a future nuclear war or act of nuclear terrorism that forces a future pope to change his abode. A number
of other quatrains describe what sounds like a natural disaster or nuclear terrorist attack on Rome.

2 Q43--A comet ("bearded star") appears
when three great princes will be enemies. This was fulfilled in 1577 when a comet appeared just as Catholic King Henry III
of France, and his off-and-on ally, Henry de Guise, leader of the Catholic League, fought the Huguenot (Protestant) forces
of Henry of Navarre during the final year of the Sixth War of Religion. A shaky peace followed but soon collapsed. Later the
three Henry's fought a three sided civil war for the throne of France.

2 Q46--After a great misery (possibly
World War II) a greater approaches around the time of the millennium. This might be referring to what Nostradamus calls elsewhere
in his prophecies a 27-year war of the Third Antichrist. This catalytic figure igniting the war he also calls "Mabus."

2 Q62--This by far is the most famous
comet prophecy because it foretells the emergence of the Third Antichrist--"Mabus"--at the time when a "comet will pass."
The comet in question has to be a significant portent in the sky--not some little speck swallowed by the sun that only an
astronomer sees in a telescope. Everyone has to see this comet in the skies! So far only two comets in recent history have
matched this prerequisite: Halley's Comet in 1986 and Comet Hale-Bopp in 1997. One prophecy implies that Nostradamus' 27-year
war begins near or shortly after the "seventh" month of "1999." He might have meant the right "seventh" month (September)
for the wrong year. If the terrorist attack on America on 11 September 2001 was be the "Pearl Harbor" event of the next world
war, then the appearance of Hale-Bopp in 1997 is near enough in time to be the prime candidate for the comet of Mabus for
now. In which case "Mabus" may be decoded as "Usama b"in Laden. Use Nostradamus' laws of anagram to scramble the first name
"Usama" to get "Maaus" (b)in Laden. Replace the redundant "a" with the "b," and you get "Mabus."

Perhaps there will be another comet coming in the future
that shines in skies over which the war has already begun. Perhaps Nostradamus, ever the prescient poet, metaphorically implies
the fall of a cometlike portent, rather than a literal comet as the marker for war. The Space Shuttle Columbia fell out of
the skies just a few weeks before the Iraq War of G.W. Bush began. Is he "Mabus"? The law of anagram allows you to turn a
"g" and a "w" upside down to make "m" and "a." Add "bus" with a silent Latin "h" and you get "Mabus."

2 Q96--A comet or a description of a missile
falls out of the sky near the Rhône river estuary in S. France at a time when "Persia" (Iran?) invades Macedonia (the modern
day Balkans). The wording of this prophecy is vague enough to cover wars between Greece/Macedonia and Persia in the past or
a conflict in the future.

4 Q67--A "long" comet is seen in the skies
when the world's climate heats up, and "fires" of war and terrorist "raids" multiply. Astrological hints in this prophecy
foresee such a comet appearing when Mars and Saturn are in Leo from June through July of 2006.

6 Q6--Another reference to the destruction
of Rome when a comet appears not far from the constellation of Cancer.

Presage 52 from the Almanac for the year
1560. The reference here concerns near-future events for France in the year 1560.

*

ASSESSMENT

Taken as a group, one could derive the following future scenarios:

COMET/METEOR STRIKE: One related to a natural or cosmic disaster.
The quatrains describe a comet or meteor striking the eastern Mediterranean Sea sending thousand-foot tidal waves sloshing
back and forth across the coasts of the Near East, North Africa and Southern Europe. Thus the references to Rome's future
destruction from fires and "floods" might infer a tidal wave toppling the Vatican and St. Peter's Basilica. There are other
astrological prophecies loosely hinting this for a time as far ahead as 3755 A.D.

TERRORIST ATTACK ON VATICAN WHEN A COMET PASSES: Another
possible future connotes a terrorist attack on Rome around the time of a comet's passing. Indeed the "comet" itself may be
Nostradamus' labored attempt to describe the fiery plume of a missile falling out of the sky like a comet.

COMET APPEARS AT THE DAWN OF WORLD WAR III: The appearance
of Halley's Comet in 1986, Hale-Bopp in 1997 may portend that the world war of Nostradamus' Third Antichrist is at hand. It
is popularly believed that he dated the onset of war for July or September 1999. The war may have begun in September of 2001.
A near miss but close enough, when one considers that the future, like the present, is not static. It is dynamic. Changes
happen.

A DISASTER THAT "LOOKS" LIKE A COMET TO NOSTRADAMUS PORTENDS
WORLD WAR III: Nostradamus was human and often misread his symbols. Therefore we cannot rule out the Columbia Shuttle disaster
as the comet falling out of the sky foreseen to mark the beginning of the 27-year war of the Third Antichrist. Columbia fell
out of the sky in the month before the US invasion of Iraq. The US occupation in Iraq could turn out to be the catalyst of
an escalation and spread of a global terrorist conflict. Therefore, Columbia's fiery fall like a comet over Texas (the home
state of the president waging such a war) is the cometary omen foreseen by Nostradamus.

COMPOSITE COMETS MISTAKEN BY NOSTRADAMUS AS ONE COSMIC EVENT:
It often happened that Nostradamus' prophecies came to him like a traffic backup of visions on the freeway of time. For instance,
his prophecies about an invasion of France from Germany incorporate details from both the 1914 and 1940 invasions. He incorrectly
saw them as one. The appearance of Halley, Hale-Bopp, the comet-like fall of the Space Shuttle Columbia--and perhaps a dramatic
near future appearance of a new comet, maybe Comet NEAT--could all be concentrated in the mind of Nostradamus as one cosmic
portent for the Third World War of terrorism.

WHAT ABOUT COMET NEAT?

If NEAT would surprise us with as spectacular a display of
fiery tail as Hale-Bopp in 1997 we could call it the comet of Mabus. A stunning Comet NEAT, like the cometary fall of Columbia
over Texas, would portend something significant and ominous for President Bush and America in their future. Conjoined with
Saturn, it would be a significant portent, given that the American president and Usama bin Laden are the current prime
candidates for Nostradamus' fearsome "Mabus."

Since 1986, I have been saying that the greatest danger of
a Third World War comes from Iraq and the Middle East falling into civil strife and chaos. The flash point of this is American
mishandling of the Shiite majority in occupied Iraq. The first significant Shia rebellion of Ayatollah al-Sadr's Madhi militia
is but a foretaste of worse things to come after the light Comet NEAT fades.

Friends, The following essay will be the main topic for my appearance on Art Bell's Coast to Coast
AM radio show, Saturday night, 3 July. If you live in North America or the Caribbean, check your local syndicated Premier
Radio station. You can also listen to the show anywhere in the world through internet--see http://www.coasttocoastam.com/.
I'll be on the air from 11 pm through 2 am, Pacific Standard Time.

*

I think you'll find it quite surprising how history from forty years ago is repeating itself today.
Some elements may reverse roles and come forth in altered sequences but the "material," if you will, of karmic lessons unlearned
from the Sixties have reappeared again in our time.

Countries, like individuals, face karmic lessons (i.e., lessons about actions that bring reactions
for good or ill). When a lesson isn't learned, it returns in a magnified form. You might say the message echoes again, only
much louder. For instance, Germany as a nation had a karmic lesson to learn concerning the self-destructive nature of their
warrior culture. Germany had a bad habit to take on the world in a high-stakes gamble that either brought total victory or
"Götterdämmerung" (a Teutonic version of the end of the world). Germany's defeat in World War One didn't teach them the lesson
so 20 years later a far more strident echo of the self-destructive Teutonic battle fever appeared in the guise of Hitler and
the Nazis. Their "Götterdämmerung" almost annihilated Germany.

You can tell a national group has learned their collective karmic lesson when they don't re-echo or
recycle the lesson in 20 or 40 years. So far it would seem that Germany has learned its historical lesson. Germany has never
repeated its Imperial or Hitlerian mistakes of 1914-1918 and 1939-1945.

America is also stuck in a karmic loop of unlearned historical lessons--this time coming from the 1960s.
These lessons are now recycling back after 40 years. They generally concern America's descent into military adventurism after
the assassination of Kennedy. What triggers the karmic "echo" is an assassination or death of a president and/or an ill-conceived,
unsubstantiated reason for launching a unilateral American military adventure. These events lead to a social polarization
of the country, social disorder, the disgrace and destruction of a president, followed by a his party's loss of the presidential
elections. The new president is a reformer with a potential for greatness. This new president eventually brings the troops
home and ends the quagmire war of the predecessor. This president also may fall from power after a landslide election for
a second term because of scandals and disgrace stemming from settling scores with political enemies.

The Karmic Lessons in question:

Appeared from 1960 (echoing in 2000)to 1964 (2004) through 1968 (2008)to
1972 (2012)

Here's an outline of events and historic mistakes of those days:

--JFK (John Fitzgerald Kennedy) was elected in the disputed presidential election of 1960 against the
former two-term Republican Vice President of the Eisenhower administration, Richard Nixon. Advisers pressed Nixon to challenge
the results in one disputed state (Illinois), but declined to do so because he feared it would hurt the nation.

--JFK campaigns for the presidency during the Jupiter/Saturn conjunction. Astrologers claim the conjunction
influences the death or assassination of a president while in office once every 20 years since Harrison campaigned for president
in 1840. Thus Harrison (1840), Lincoln (1860), Garfield (1880), Mickinley (1900), Harding (1920), Roosevelt (1940), and Kennedy
(1960) have all died either in their first or second terms (in the case of Roosevelt, in his fourth term). Only Reagan (1980)
has survived the curse of this conjunction, although his potential assassin wounded him seriously and Reagan nearly died.

--If Kennedy had not been assassinated and had he survived his first term he would still die in his
second term. Newly disclosed medical evidence support rumors that Kennedy most likely would have died from a fatal adrenal
gland malady sometime in his second term.

--President Johnson (from Texas) ascends to the White House to finish Kennedy's term. He launches his
Great Society policies.

--Johnson commits America to a full scale war in Vietnam, thanks to a hasty Defense Secretary William
MacNamara, who does not adequately confirm reports that North Vietnamese gunboats actually did fire on US Destroyers in the
Gulf of Tonkin. A week after Johnson began bombing North Vietnam and landing troops in South Vietnam, MacNamara discovered
that US ships in the Gulf of Tonkin were firing on each other. There was no attack from North Vietnam. This information was
kept secret and the war continued in the name of larger strategic reasons--to contain the spread of communism in South East
Asia.

--The Democrat controlled Congress unaware of the Gulf of Tonkin mistake until it is too late rushed
to surrender their constitutional war powers to President Johnson. They scarcely debate this serious surrender of constitutional
power to the executive branch from within their ranks; nor do the minority senators from the Republican party offer much opposition.
The president and congressmen from both sides of the bench blindly trusted MacNamara's intelligence findings. The US Senate
therefore gave Johnson carte blanche war powers in South East Asia. A young Senator Robert Byrd from West Virginia was one
of them.

--Johnson's war in Vietnam doesn't undermine his presidency until after he's reelected in 1964.
After which, the Vietnam war spreads into Laos and Cambodia, riots and social polarization ensue. Johnson's Great Society
policies are derailed, and he ops out of running for president for a second term. Johnson hopes that by stepping down he can
save his party's hold of the White House and start the process of healing a nation torn apart by a botched war now identified
with him.

--Power shifts in the 1968 election. Richard Nixon returns and wins one of the closest elections in
history against Johnson's Vice President, Hubert Humphrey, with scarcely a popular vote difference of a half million.

--The Republican President, who had already spent 8 years learning the presidential trade in the Eisenhower
White House, struggles with a Democrat-run House and Senate over policy. He is burdened with getting out of the Vietnam quagmire
of his predecessor. Nixon is eventually successful on that front. The troops come home.

--Nixon has great success in global affairs and some success in domestic affairs. He will win a landslide
election in 1972 for a second term, but his potential for greatness is undermined by his darker side. Nixon wants to take
revenge on leaders of the radical Left in the Democrat Party. He approves a burglary of the Democrat Party offices at Watergate.
His presidency falls because of the Watergate conspiracy and he leaves office in disgrace.

*

Forty years pass.Lessons unlearned return:

We enter the 40-year karmic echo of the 60sfrom 2000 (1960) to 2004 (1964)through
2008 (1968) to 2012 (1972).

--Republican President G.W. Bush (from Texas) is elected in a disputed election in 2000 against the
former two-term "Democrat," Vice President Al Gore. Unlike Nixon, Gore heeded those encouraging him to challenge the election
results in one disputed state (Florida). Many believe he hurt the nation.

--President Bush's election is confirmed and he launches the Neo-Conservative and Compassionate Conservative
movement (his version of Johnson's "Great Society").

--Bush, 20 years after Reagan, is the next person campaigning for president during the transit of a
Jupiter/Saturn conjunction. If he survives his first term he might die in office from violence or natural causes in his second
term.

--The Democrats pit a new JFK (John Forbes Kerry) against Bush who seeks re-election in 2004.

--Bush goes to war in Iraq based on imaginary reports issued by a hasty Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld
(who by the way also slicks his hair back like MacNamara) stating that Iraq had WMD--Weapons of mass destruction--poised to
strike at America.

--A "Republican" controlled Congress unaware of this mistake until it is too late rushes to surrender
their constitutional war powers to President Bush with scarcely any questions or debate from the minority "Democrat" party.
A majority of Senators and congressmen from both sides of the bench blindly trust the intelligence findings of their Republican
President and his Secretary of Defense. They give Bush carte blanche to wage war in the Middle East region.

--An older and wiser Senator Byrd was one of the few dissenting voices, pleading with his Republican
and Democrat colleagues in the Senate not to repeat the mistake of a hasty rush to war, like Vietnam, in Iraq.

--Bush's war in Iraq shows ominous signs of being a new Vietnam; however, like Johnson, the effects
of the mounting quagmire in Iraq may not undermine his presidency until after he is re-elected in 2004 (in Johnson's case
1964). After which, riots and a deepening social polarization could ensue. By his second term, a badly botched war in Iraq
could undermine Bush's Neo-Conservative movement and Compassionate Conservative policies. A full-scale quagmire in Iraq might
spread the war across the Middle East (as the Vietnam War spread into Cambodia and Laos 40 years before).

--Unlike Johnson, Bush cannot (will not) op out of running for a second term as president. So, if the
echoing tragedy of the Johnson presidency derailed over an illegitimate war resounds today, Bush will have to leave office
in his second term over Iraq--or worse.

--The Jupiter-Saturn curse could see another acting president die in the White House, such as JFK before.
If Bush doesn't die in office, impeachment is also possible. Bush, unlike Johnson, cannot avoid such a disgrace. He might
be pressured to step down from office as a gesture to heal a nation torn apart over "his" version of Vietnam in Iraq.

--In 2008, a "Nixonian" Democrat wins one of the closest elections in history against Bush's (or President
Cheney's) Vice President with scarcely a difference of 500,000 popular votes.

--This Democrat president, (who spent 8 years learning "her" presidential trade in the Clinton White
House) struggles with a Republican-run House and Senate over policy.

--"She" is burdened with getting out of the Iraq quagmire of "her" predecessor. This "Nixon"/Hillary
Clinton is eventually successful. The troops come home. She wins a landslide election for a second term in 2012.

--"She" also has great success in global affairs and some in domestic affairs, but "her" potential
for greatness is undermined by her darker side. She wants to get even with her "Right Wing" enemies who conspired to undermine
her husband's presidency.

--If she doesn't learn the lessons of Nixon, her presidency could fall by way of another Watergate
conspiracy, or a conundrum caused by the "First Gentleman"--her husband Bill Clinton--and she leaves office in disgrace.

*

Will History repeat itself? Only if we don't learn our lessons. Thus, America will go through something
like this again in the 2040s and each time the echo of karma is much worse than the last.

Hogue Prophecy Bulletin (2 October 2004)

WHO WILL WINTHE PRESIDENCY IN 2004?

"Where a Gore presidency will contain Iraq there will be an eagerness in a Bush presidency
to settle scores and bring about a Gulf War, Part Two. It will most likely topple Saddam Hussein but not before it gets a
Bush presidency bogged down in a Vietnam in the desert and threatens America with 27 to 30 years of terrorist reprisals."

John Hogue (6 November 2000)

(Recorded for the HP Bulletin, "A PRESIDENTIAL PROPHECY" issued on the eve of the last presidential
election)

Friends, I have posted this bulletin exactly one month before national election of 2004.
I have chosen this time to blog for the record my prediction for who will become the US president in November. I have been
making these presidential predictions since 1968. So far I have predicted the winner in every case. I published the prophecy
above four years ago on the eve of the 2000 election. On that day I appeared on Jeff Rense's nationally syndicated radio show
to give a last prophetic word about who was going to win: Democrat Al Gore or Republican George W. Bush. It had remained firmly
clear to me that Al Gore would win the election ever since I first stated my prediction on ABC's "The View" two years earlier
on 30 October 1998. Right beside this firm feeling was an equally strong and puzzling premonition growing that this was going
to be the first time I predicted the wrong winner. At first I reasoned that premonition to be was a case of oracular jitters
over the mounting odds against sustaining a winning streak of eight successes across 32 years for a ninth time; however, as
the election date approached I began wondering if another "message" from the future was knocking on the door of perception,
and my biases had locked the door. My prediction had evolved into a puzzling, prescient riddle impossible for me to unravel.
I reasoned that only events on election day would resolve the conflict in my perception.

I conveyed the crux of this to Rense's national audience, explaining that divination sometimes
is an art wherein one neither understands nor supports the message received--still one must deliver it. I stood by what continued
to be my unshakable premonition that Gore was going to win the election by a half-million votes. I accepted an equally certain
premonition that I was going to be wrong.

As it turned out, I was right about Gore winning the election by a half-million votes and evidence
continues to mount supporting the contention that he won the popular vote in Florida as well. And yet, the voting dispute
in Florida completely blind sided me. The result of which led to the US Supreme Court choosing the clear loser by popular
vote as America's next president. In the end, the riddle prophecy was correct. Gore did win, and I "was" wrong. The experience
has taught me that my presidential predictions since 1968 are an intuition based on tuning into the heart of the voting majority.
The 18th century technicalities of Electoral College law, the cunningness of lawyers, the 50,000 African Americans denied
their vote by a Republican Secretary of State of Florida were elements outside of my augury. I had tuned into the essential
wish of the voters, not the incompetence of a Florida election official--a Democrat--designing and approving a butterfly ballot
so confusing that thousands of voters choosing left-of-center Al Gore technically punched a hole for the right wing Reform
Party candidate, Pat Buchanan. That was not their "wish."

I appeared on Coast to Coast AM with Ian Punnet on 12 November 2000, six days after the dangling
chad debate began in Florida, and the future winner of the presidency was in doubt.. Our conversation settled on predicting
the destiny of either a Gore or Bush presidency. I told Ian's national audience that affliction would rule the future scenario
of either man's administration. Clearly I saw greater troubles for the country and a quagmire in Iraq that would spread into
a widening war of terrorism if Bush became the president. We will never know if my prediction of a more moderate disaster
with four years of Gore was correct because destiny (and a majority of Supreme Court justices) set us down the course of the
latter timeline. Unfortunately, many things I said in November and December of 2000 and again around Bush's inauguration in
January 2001 have come to pass. There has been a stagnation of the economy and a recession by 2002:

"The US recession will begin. The Bush tax cuts may help it level off for a time, but
the recession will deepen by the end of 2001 causing an economic crisis in 2002. "

I predicted as early as August 2000 in writing and on taped and
documented radio show appearances that the Bush administration would put American troops on the ground in a major war in the
Middle East two years into his presidency. The prophecy implied that the true motivation was a back door, right wing plot
to control Iraq's oil reserves and settle old scores from the previous Bush's war with Saddam Hussein:

"I've seen this coming years ago... I always felt that if a Republican was elected
next, he would be a moderate Republican, but he would pick a right wing vice president. I thought it would have been a woman
and that's where I was wrong in these prophecies. I thought it would be Elizabeth Dole. She came somewhat close in the fact
she actually tried to run this year. But I've got to consider that a failed prophecy. [Still], whether it was a man or a women
I felt it would be someone who was extremely right wing...If a Bush-Cheney ticket did win, we would probably be in a major
Middle East war with Iraq within two years...finishing unfinished business over oil...The oil business connections with the
Bush-Cheney families are very strong."

(Laura Lee Online, 9 August 2000)

Bush
did initially present himself as a moderate Republican. Then he picked Cheney as his Vice President running mate--an avowed
right wing ideologue of the neo-conservative movement. The press grumbled that Cheney, the former CEO of Haliburton Corporation,
had too many conflicts of interests to be vice president because of his oil business ties with the Middle East. Perhaps they
were right. At present, his former company, Haliburton, monopolized most of the contracts to rebuild Iraq's oil infrastructure.

It is a well-known fact that the Bush administration began its military buildup for an Iraqi
invasion two years after he was elected. The original plan was to invade Iraq in the late autumn of 2002 rather than early
2003. Bush in October 2002 relented to international pressure giving the United Nations weapons inspectors in Iraq a little
more time to find weapons of mass destruction. A need for more political and diplomatic legitimacy had Bush going through
the motions of appearing to make his case for invasion before the world. It was effective. Even most House and Senate Democrats--including
Senator Kerry--blithely signed on to a bellicose Bush carte blanche, and gave the president war powers with nary a debate.
Kerry and other Democrat legislators who presently condemn the president for rushing to war would like us to forget all the
clear and present evidence they dismissed in October 2002 that implicated Bush was hell bent on war in Iraq, for whatever
reason he could find or manufacture. But more important than this, the president postponed his invasion until early 2003 not
to satisfy the UN, but support a far more valuable authority. There were those Pentagon planners who said they needed time
to ship tens of thousands more soldiers for the invasion. The president was in a hurry to ramp up for war, though. He waved
off other Pentagon pundits who cautioned the president needed hundreds of thousands more soldiers to invade and maintain postwar
Iraq.

We are now in the Middle Eastern war I foresaw as far back as the autumn of 2000. Are we in
a "second Vietnam quagmire" yet?

Since US forces invaded Iraq early in the new year of 2003, ninety percent of all casualties
lost by US and coalition forces so far have happened "after" Iraq was occupied and Saddam Hussein overthrown. On 1 May 2003,
the president costumed with suitable flight-suit panache stood on the tarmac of the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln. He was
as close to war zone Iraq as a dozen miles off the coast of San Diego, California when he declared the Iraq mission accomplished.
America took down Saddam Hussein's regime and his supposed weapons of mass destruction (WMD) with a death toll just under
200 killed in action and several hundred wounded. Exactly 17 months later, the stockpiles of WMD (the grounds for which the
war was fought) are no where to be found. The postwar Iraq period has seen the death toll mounting to 1,060 US dead, another
240 coalition dead, the US contractor death count pushing the 100 mark. There are 7,500 US and coalition wounded, 10 to 20,000
Iraqi dead, and signs point to this "liberated" country poised for a break up into three warring factions in a civil war next
year.

It waddles and quacks like a quagmire to me. Still, on one prediction I made back in 2000, I
will be completely wrong:

G.W. Bush will not be a single term president.

He will win a second term in office. This time his chief lawyer, James Baker, might have to
use Gore's re-count argument from 2000. Bush in 2004 might win a slight majority of the popular vote but lose the electoral
vote to Kerry. I am sure Baker's brace of lawyers will seek a loophole, or manufacture one, to negate Kerry's electoral college
majority. One possible scenario will see the Republicans complaining about e-votes falsely inflated by a computer glitch.
They will successfully have these ballots overturned and their man will keep his job in the White House.

I first began saying for the record that Bush would win a second term on Whitley Strieber's
Dreamland cyber radio show ten months ago.

Here is an extract recorded on 2 December 2003. It is important to note that at the time Ralph
Nader was not in the presidential campaign. The political campaigns of the Democratic and Republican parties were gearing
up for the Iowa caucus and the first presidential primary in New Hampshire. I added the brackets today for clarification:

"I think it will be a very close election again. I think Dean will be the man. Although
Dean will be hamstrung by the old guard of the Democrat party who will not support him and will keep it rather divisive. I
think Dean will be the man they choose [because] he has the best chance for defeating George Bush. But it's also likely that
one of the old crony Democrats might be running too...

"Ralph Nader I think is about to put his endorsement in with Dean. And he's already
stated that he's not going to run for the Green Party this year. I think he would run if Dean is denied his lead by the Democrat
power system. Then I think he would step in."

Nader did step in as an independent candidate without the Green Party's support when Howard
Dean's notorious Iowa caucus "screech" speech derailed his presidential campaign. The Dean people blamed the Kerry campaign
for playing dirty tricks in Iowa and later in New Hampshire. One of these "tricks" purportedly had Democrat party bosses pressing
their contacts in the media to misrepresent Dean's Iowa caucus speech in a way that made him look like a screaming maniac.
For a week afterwards, the TV press ran 700 replays of Dean trying to shout over the deafening cheers of his followers. What
the microphone savvy press "overlooked" was Dean holding a commonly used TV mike by public speakers. It negates background
noise, so the mike made him sound and look like an idiot shouting at the top of his lungs to a modestly cheering crowd. Only
after his presidential campaign was virtually dead in the water, did the press admit to a technically flawed overstatement
of Dean's screech. The contrite press began replaying only a few examples of the video with the real sound levels in the meeting
hall. The actual crowd noise was so thunderous that one could not even hear Dean trying to shout over the din.

After what I said about Dean's potential undermining by the Democratic powers-that-be, Whitley
Strieber asked me whether George Bush would win a second term. I said that he would despite what has come to pass in many
of my previous predictions in 2000. His popularity would survive the faltering economy I foresaw in 2002 through 2003, because
"the economy would start improving enough in 2004...to allow George W. Bush to squeak by for a second term." Then I added:

"When I say the economy's improving, it's probably not going to be that good
[but] there's a [state] of denial descending over America that is being manipulated quite brilliantly by the current administration.
And my sense is that [at the time of the 2004 election day] things in Iraq will be...terrible."

Ten months after saying the above, the economy in 2004 has slightly improved, though it is still
quite sluggish. The denial is deepening too. The Bush administration is repetitively reminding us just how much better Iraq
is getting. However, the British "and" CIA intelligence reports of September 2004 forewarn America may lose the peace in Iraq.
Whole regions of the country are now "no go" zones for US soldiers and contractors. Hostage taking of contractors is at an
all-time high. A recent CIA intelligence report in its worse case scenario predicts a 3 to 1 chance of a plunge into a three-way
Iraqi civil war by next year. Still, despite this, and President Bush's poor showing in the first presidential debate, I still
predict that the collective denial of Americans will deepen. On 2 November, more than half the country will still believe
President Bush can lead the country better than Kerry in Iraq and the war on terror.

Let us now move three months forward from my statements on Strieber's show in December 2003
to those made on Mitch Battros' Earthchanges TV in March of 2004. Then it was clear that the powers of the Democratic party
had pushed John F. Kerry to the forefront as their presidential candidate apparent. I assessed the consequences of Kerry's
new supremacy in the following statement:

"We are seeing [the Democrats] repeat the mistakes the Republicans made in 1996 when
they went against Clinton in his second term. [In 1994] Clinton [like Bush] was also in a lot of trouble after the end of
his first term...[yet] I said [Clinton] would win. People [in 1994] were laughing me off radio shows saying 'You've got to
be kidding.' They said, 'There's no way William Jefferson Clinton can win a second term...' I said that [the Republicans]
would pick Bob Dole because of the [Republican Party's] crony power system... And [I added that] Bob Dole, although he's a
fine man, is not presidential enough to win against Clinton.

"I believe that the Democrats have now chosen their version of Bob Dole to run against
George W. Bush."

Six months later, the presidential campaign of 2004 looks ever more like 1996. This may lead
to an election result that is not as close as I currently predict. Bush, like Clinton against Dole in 1996, may win by a margin
of the popular vote as high as five percent.

With that said, today I still hold to my prediction that 2004 will become one of the closest
presidential races in history, with no less than three disputed states requiring a re-count. Bush's poor showing in the first
and the next two presidential debates will decimate his ten point lead in the polls from September. October will also narrow
the race with bad news about rising oil prices, and a drop in the stock market. This will stretch the credibility ever thinner
of any veil of improvement trying to hide the ugly face of this American economy. Also, Iraq is unraveling, and fast, but
the public perception of the Bush Administration's incompetent waging the war will not gain enough momentum before the elections
to unseat him from office.

I will say this, after the elections on 2 November, the coming two months of warfare in Iraq
will be the bloodiest seen. It will get worse after a railroaded Iraq election attempt in early 2005. By inauguration day
in late January, a slight majority of Americans will see President Bush sworn into office for a second term and ponder, "What
in the world have we done?"

WHY J. F. KERRY WILL LOSE IN 2004

Image matters in this ever more media-shallow American society. Kerry's dull "Bob Dole" qualities
make him an unexciting replacement to Bush. Bush might not be able to put two words together without a prompter but he's folksy.
Kerry puts too many words together and appears ponderous and pedantic. He needs a timer light to keep his statements pithy,
as the first debate showed. Bush's inarticulate cowboy campaign appeals to the shoot'em first and think later qualities of
the average American mind

The Democratic party chose their man motivated not by what he would do, but because he is "anybody
but" Bush. This is fundamentally flawed reasoning. Clinton beat the last Bush because he presented himself as a "positive"
alternate. Negative alternatives never win presidential elections against an incumbent as Dole's run as the Republican's version
of "anybody but Clinton" proved. The Republicans learned their lesson, the Democrats, as usual, have not. They run the real
danger of dying out as a political party in the next four years if they do not heed their messengers of reform, like Howard
Dean. Bush will win a second term because people will vote for the incumbent if they believe, or are made to believe, his
policies improve the economy. It also helps Bush that both candidates come across with equally vague and similar sounding
foreign and domestic policies. When a clear choice between candidates becomes the first casualty of a political campaign,
Americans must pick their next president based on the lowest and most infantile denominator: likeability.

Ah shucks, folks, we all know who's more chummy and who's more like a mummy in this race.

Bush will not lose the election because of Iraq, although his Iraqi adventure is heading for
an oil sinkhole on fire. His administration effectively manipulates and suspends the short term memory of Americans and their
media. The American people want to believe things will get better in Iraq, so the White House postpones facing reality by
spinning special dates for giving democracy to the Iraqis, such as 1 July 2003. The Bush administration knows well that things
as promised definitely did not get better this summer after the American "viceroy" of Iraq, Paul Bremer, handed power over
to the Iraqi provisional government of Prime Minister Allawi.

Time for a new deadline.

Again the Bush administration's rhetoric implies a rosier future, and a better Iraq after elections
in January 2005. The reality will be a civil war. Not to worry, that is after the presidential elections in November. There
is still time to persuade enough Americans voters on 2 November to stay the course and reelect President Bush to complete
the job in Iraq.

Finally, I will predict that the campaign and election of 2004 will go down in history as the
most polarizing national election since the one held on the eve of the American Civil War. The election of 1860 divided the
nation into the "blue" and liberal Northerners who believed in abolishing slavery and upholding a federal union. The Southerners
became the "gray" Confederates who upheld and fought for the conservative notion of states' rights and the tradition of slavery.

This time the election of 2004 will solidify a divide of the nation between the "blue" and the
"red."

Half the country, which is generally "blue" liberal and urban, harbor a near hysterical fear
and hatred of the president. They are willing to choose any candidate presented by the blue party bosses that waddles like
a president, or quacks like a president. Their motto is:

"Anybody but Bush!"

Half the country, which is generally "red" conservative and rural, harbor a near anal retentive
fear and hatred of liberals in power. They will stand firm with their red president no matter what messes he steps into with
his flight suit's boot. Their motto is

"My Bush, right or wrong!"

Are we back to the future of civil war? Stay tuned for my election eve Halloween assessment
of what potential future presidencies we can expect from Kerry or Bush.

Hogue Prophecy Bulletin(2 November 2004)

2004--2008

AMERICA'S TRAVAILOF POLITICAL ATONEMENT

Friends, I write this article not on the day of America's most important election in history. That already happened
four years ago in the year 2000. The course of US politics and world history was set. Indeed, whoever the president will be
the choices made by--or stolen from--the American people in the 2000 election have gained a momentum that will run and reverberate
through the history of the next 30 years. The dangling chad high jinks of 2000 has put into power a bellicose and internationally
unilateralist, interventionist administration. Bush Corp. consists of former movers and shakers of the fossil fuel
industry--the very industry responsible for producing the key ingredient for runaway climate change. Current American policy
and fossil fuel consumption are in effect throwing gasoline on the fires of global warming. And, it is a prescient fact that
hundreds of prophecies from around the world--including even those recently published by the Pentagon--point to climate disruption
as the key trigger for apocalyptic global warfare in the near future.

I believe the terrorist attack on 11 September 2001 would have happened no matter whether Al Gore was president in place
of G.W. Bush. The reaction to such an attack may have been quite different though. Thanks to decisions made in 2000, a better
future prosecution of the war against al-Qaeda and Usama bin Laden, is gone, and ecologically responsible US economic policies
forestalling a global climate war, a dream.

The 16th-century French seer, Nostradamus, foresaw the attack on the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York.
I have commented on two prophecies about the attack in books and articles since 1983. (You can find a detailed account of
Century 6 Quatrain 97 and Century 10 Quatrain 49 by linking to: "Nostradamus: A Life and Myth" [3 November 2003]: http://www.hogueprophecy.com/archiv34.htm).
My interpretations over the years anticipated a defining incident, such as a terrorist attack on America by Middle Eastern
extremists sometime shortly after 1999. This Peal Harbor-style surprise attack would trigger the first world war of the Aquarian
Age--a war of international terrorism set to undermine civilization in a conflict lasting 27 years.

Even now, that war can be cut short. There is a prophecy from Nostradamus that could be taken as a positive alternative
history. In it, America learns the right lesson from the shock of 9/11, changes policies and greatly diminishes the impact
of the 27-year conflict on the world. In previous books and articles, Quatrain 24 of Century 6 dates a time in the summer
of 2002 when the American people as well as the president might begin reaping the whirlwind because they did not take stock
of their part in the dysfunctional, and hypocritical relationship with the Middle East over the past half-century. Shortly
after July 2002 America will wage a ruinous war in the Middle East. A hard and needless lesson unavoided brings a hard lesson
learned in four to six years. Thus, when America changes leaders and pulls out of Iraq, a new policy in the Middle East solves
the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, revitalizes Arab moderates taking support away from terrorists. The new American president
seizes an opportunity to forestall the destruction and horrors of the coming 27 year war and bring peace to the world.

Mars and the sceptre (of Jupiter) will meet in conjunction,A calamitous war under Cancer:A short
time afterward a new king will be anointed,Who will bring peace to the earth for a long time.

Now let us break my interpretation down line by line:

"Mars and the sceptre (of Jupiter) will meet in conjunction..."

Nostradamus begins the prophecy with an astrological conjunction of Mars with Jupiter. This took place at the end of June
through the beginning of July 2002. They were conjoined on the birthdate of America--4 July.

"...A calamitous war under Cancer..."

America was born "under" the sign of Cancer. The current president, G. W. Bush, was also born "under" the sign of Cancer.
Astrologically speaking, Nostradamus is clearly pointing to America and its leader. At this time both will already be fighting
a war with the "great king of terror" Nostradamus foresaw in Quatrain 72 of Century 10. In that prophecy, he expected this
war would begin in 1999, either during the "seventh" month (of Cancer), or "Sept mois" (seventh month) is a code for "September."
It would seem that Nostradamus peering into the future back in 1557 got the year wrong but perhaps got the month right--"September"
2001, not "1999."

The cryptic quality of this line also implies that a choice will be made around the early summer of 2002 by the Cancerian
president that will propel the Cancerian United States into a disastrous war. This could be the one foreseen in Century 3
Quatrain 61 by Nostradamus in "Mesopotamia" (modern Iraq), wherein, an Islamic rebellion of the Sharia "law" holds firm against
a great host of new "crusaders." Link to the following archived article: "New Crusades and Quagmires" (11 July 2003) http://www.hogueprophecy.com/archiv31.htm.

Line three of 6 Q24 reads:

"...A short time afterward a new king will be anointed..."

A "short time" to Nostradamus, who wrote a history of the future covering thousands of years can be several years long.
Therefore, the anointing or in modern terms the "election" of a new American leader either implies the election takes place
on 2 November 2004 with J. F. Kerry becoming the "new king" of America, or Bush is re-elected--as I believe he will be--and
the advent of a new leader is delayed until election day, 4 November 2008.

The final line of the prophecy reads:

"...Who will bring peace to the earth for a long time."

Whoever this new leader of America is, he or "she" is destined to change the course of American foreign and Middle Eastern
policy in a way that could forestall, delay, or greatly diminish the impact of the 27-year war of terrorism.

A full accounting of Quatrain 24 of Century 6 can be read in a HogueProphecy Bulletin archived at the following link: ("A
Calamitous War Under Cancer? Or, Peace for a Long Time?" [30 September 2002]: http://www.hogueprophecy.com/archiv27.htm).

Two years ago I closed my interpretation of line four in that article with the following:

"Perhaps the change in leadership comes from the current president dying in office, or more hopefully from a new administration
elected in 2004. Only events and time will tell which fate awaits the American presidency.

"There is hope that peace and a new understanding about the Middle East will prevail. It could come from America collectively
enduring a hard karmic lesson for its past hypocrisies in the name of democracy, freedom and peace. In 2004, the American
electorate might stop the social and economic discord caused by another politically crippled Texan president, stuck in the
Middle Eastern quagmire of a new Vietnam. The chastened American people might elect a new 'king' who ‘will bring peace
to the earth for a long time. '"

This statement above may engender hope in the Kerry camp. However, I believe that hope is premature. I believe the following
passage written a half year ago bears more prescient clarity on what, astrologically speaking, will be the judge in America's
fortunes after the election of 2004:

"The 16th-century French seer in Century 6, Quatrain 24 of his magnum prophetic opus 'Les Propheties' predicted that
a 'calamitous war under Cancer' would be fought shortly after the conjunction of Mars with Jupiter. The most recent conjunction
of the two planets took place in June of 2002. America invaded and occupied Iraq early the following year. America was born
under the sign of Cancer, as is its current president. Are they both marked for calamity? Perhaps the planet Saturn will be
the judge. Saturn in predictive astrology is the planet of karmic payment (that is, reactions that come home to roost from
positive or negative actions committed). Saturn is also the ruler of personal and cosmic reality checks. Resist reality and
you will suffer. Accept reality, and Saturn helps individuals and nations evolve and transcend their negative actions."

We can understand why Americans have four more years of travails to suffer by interpreting the astrological influence of
Saturn on Kerry's and Bush's birth charts on election day--the astrological "birth day" of the next four-year term.

G. W. Bush's destiny will be karmically magnified--for better or for worse--on election day, 2 November when Saturn transits
27 degrees Cancer in virtual conjunction over his natal Saturn position at 26 degrees Cancer. The good news for Bush is that
the US birth chart has Saturn sitting in Libra at 14 degrees. That means Saturn's current transit over Bush's natal Saturn
position magnifies an ultimately positive though difficult uphill battle to final victory in the 2004 election. Bush will
win but other negative aspects to Bush's natal Saturn in his chart on that day will also magnify all of his limitations and
weaknesses as a leader in his second term.

After the baying of lawyers and the re-counts have come and gone, Bush will stand for inauguration in January 2005 over
a country bitterly divided. Under his second four-year term America will suffer domestic civil unrest, lose a war in Iraq,
and fight new wars in Iran and North Korea. There will be an economic crisis over oil as early as the summer of 2005. There
will also be a second terrorist attack on the domestic front, transcending the devastation of 9/11/01. It will most likely
take place as early as the high summer of 2005 when Saturn begins its transit of Leo; or, the attack comes in the president's
his final year in office--2008.

The contender has his natal Saturn in retrograde and in opposition to his natal sun in Sagittarius. His Saturn is directly
conjunct the natal Mars (energy ruler) of America. This gives him a beneficial karmic thrust as a Saturnian reality messenger
for Americans. However, the retrograde (inverted and introspective) nature of his Saturn, in opposition to his Sun (the ruler
of ego and outer personality) in Sagittarius, inhibits Kerry's ability to communicate that reality to Americans. Add to this
Kerry's stellium of planets in Gemini and in layman's terms you have an astrological argument in favor of the Republicans
who call Kerry a flip flopper. He is someone who can argue a point 27 ways--all of them tedious and unappealing to the average
American, even if he is telling them the truth. Add this impediment to the collective impediment of an American populace,
who, under the current negative transit of Saturn through Cancer, generally want to escape from their political reality. One
sees this escapism in action in the hysterical Blue liberal battle cry, "Anybody but Bush!" versus the anal retentive Red
conservative battle cry, "My Bush, right or wrong!"

Kerry's force of Gemini Saturn, conjunct America's Gemini Mars will definitely see him come on strong at the end of this
long presidential campaign. He certainly surged to win the debates in October and tighten the race to a virtual dead heat.
However, Saturn in Cancer for Bush, positively aspected with the natal Saturn of the US birth Chart on 2 November, is far
more solid (and dare I say it) far more in sync with the present unconscious Saturnian state of Americans citizens who vote
more with their gut feelings, and for image, rather than vote on the basis of record and fact. Bush is more like them than
Kerry. He is inarticulate but forceful. He makes you comfortable. He prefers a simple bromide to set to rest a complex issue.
He is that populist, all-Amercan "good guy," the "white hat," the cowboy. He is a Cancerian blind believer in the Cancerian
American dream.

The sign of Cancer rules dreaming--also nightmares. The karmic lesson for Cancerians, be they individuals or whole nations,
is to come out of their shells. They need to let go of their dreams, and embrace the bliss of a greater reality transcending
their attachments to sweet but isolating illusions. In the next four years, Saturn destines President Bush to personify and
reflect back to Americans their dysfunctional understanding of democracy at home and abroad. If Bush is at the helm, they
could stubbornly hold onto conceited illusions of America's role in the world and continue denying what needs reform. Saturn
transiting through Cancer, Leo and Virgo in the next four years will then reap a nightmare. Only when our dreams become nightmares
do we desire to awaken.

That awakening may come with a new leader "anointed" in 2008.

PS--I intend my next bulletin to prophesy events in Bush's catastrophically Saturnian second term in office. If my prophecy
about Kerry losing the election is wrong, my next bulletin will apply divination and astrology to plot his course through
the turbulent transits of Saturn throughout his first and only term in office. I do not see the need to waste time writing
a study on a potential Kerry presidency before we know the winner, because it will be Bush, by legal hooks or by electoral
college crooks.

Friends, I originally planned to publish the following astrological essay on President Bush's birth
chart as a second part to of the 2 November 2004 bulletin: 2004--2008: America's Travail of Karmic Atonement. I wrote
it on 31 October but on election's eve I decided it would work better standing alone. Here it is today with an introductory
paragraph and quote from 2 November's bulletin.

***

Back on the eve of the presidential election, almost seven weeks ago, I used astrological divination
to predict why President Bush's natal position of Saturn, in relation to America's natal Saturn, guaranteed him victory in
the presidential elections over John F. Kerry:

"G.W. Bush's destiny will be karmically magnified--for better or for worse--on election day, 2 November
when Saturn transits 27 degrees Cancer in virtual conjunction over his natal Saturn position at 26 degrees Cancer. The good
news for Bush is that the US birth chart has Saturn sitting in Libra at 14 degrees. That means Saturn's current transit over
Bush's natal Saturn position magnifies an ultimately positive though difficult uphill battle to final victory in the 2004
election. Bush will win but other negative aspects to Bush's natal Saturn in his chart on that day will also magnify all of
his limitations and weaknesses as a leader in his second term."

Bush did win a hard fought presidential campaign, regaining enough popular support after a dismal showing
in October's presidential debates to beat his opponent by 3.5 million votes on 2 November 2004. Though some Democrats seek
resolution of ballot disputes in Ohio and Florida, I predict no re-count will countermand what has been a clear Bush victory.
On 2 November, the second term of G.W. Bush was born, astrologically speaking. Saturn's karmic candidate will be president.
What signs does a divination of the stars and their positions give us?

America will face four more years of a man struggling to transcend one of the most afflicted astrological
birth charts in the history of American presidents. Bush's Jupiter (ruler of higher mind, religion and expansive thinking)
is squared (aspected negatively) with his Sun (the ruler of his ego). That square can make him spiritually self-righteous
and narrow minded. He will be a man who cannot admit he has made a mistake.

Bush's Jupiter is also squared his Saturn (Karmic ruler). This aspect in a president can make his mistakes
in policy potentially catastrophic for his nation.

His Sun (ego) is squared his Moon (ruler of emotions). That means his emotions are often at odds with
his personality.

It gets worse.

Bush is the unfortunate recipient at birth of Neptune squared his Sun.

Noted astrologer, Frances Sakoian, once described this as "the aspect of self-delusion, par excellence."

She said the following on pp. 354-55 of her classic "The Astrologer's Handbook" (co-written by Louis
B. Acher in 1973):

"If the natives [born under this aspect] are mystically inclined, they often consider themselves
the chosen vessels of some Master or Divine Being. This belief is often the result of an unconscious desire for importance

"These persons can be vessels in a pure sense, but only if the rest of the horoscope shows a good
mentality, humility, and realistic practicality. A well-developed Mercury and Saturn will do much to offset the negative effects
of this square."

Astrologically speaking, there is no denying that President Bush's Neptune squared the Sun makes him
a medium.

But for what, and whom?

The former Prime Minsiter and perhaps future Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, recalled in an Israeli
newspaper article from early 2003, Bush saying: "God told me to strike at al-Qaeda and I struck them, and then he instructed
me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East. If you help me I will
act..."

Earlier this year, Bush famously told the world on CBS "60 Minutes" news show that he did not take
advice from his father, the former president, but listens to "a higher Father." Inferring that he talks--and receives--messages
on policy decisions from God.

Bush's Mercury (ruler of the intellect) is sextiled (positively aspected) with Neptune. However Bush's
Saturn is so ill aspected that Mercury offsets little of its negativity. It is possible that Mercury's positive inclination
might see the right people at the right time persuade him that perhaps God is not always telling him when to go to war.

Bush's Saturnian self-delusion as a medium, unfortunately, will only gain strength because of his clear
victory this November. His illusions once had a "mandate" only from the Almighty. Now it includes a slim majority of voters,
of which include the deciding edge in his favor of bloc voting Christian fundamentalists. Now, when the president talks to
his god before making monumental policy decisions, little Mercury in Bush's chart must feel like he is banished to the porch
outside the Oval Office and Saturn has locked the window doors after him. Bush's natal Saturn has a far more powerful influence
on his psyche because it is squared Jupiter (ruler of his higher mind and religious potentials) and squared his Moon (the
ruler of emotions). Little mental Mercury will find it hard to convert Bush from making snap gut judgments and rigidly keeping
them. Saturn squared Neptune nourishes Bush's blind faith in his "divine" calling to be president. A negatively aspected Neptune
(ruler of illusions) whispers in his heart of hearts. It is not God. It will be almost impossible for Bush to understand that
the voice he hears is his subconscious ego, prompted by "others."

THE SHAPE OF AMERICA'S ATONEMENT TO COME

The power of Saturn magnifies Bush's ability to win a close election on 2 November 2004. Controversies
will leave the final victory "afflicted." He will fulfill his destiny--and that destiny is karmic. He will be sworn in for
a second term as president of a deeply divided nation. His reelection will be a cosmic sign that Americans have semi-consciously
chosen to endure a Saturnian gauntlet of national atonement.

For now, I will describe this negative karma in the broadest astrological colors.

Countries go through chapters of life just like people. Now America has entered the difficult teenage
years of its destiny. It is perhaps the most powerful adolescent country in history. Power linked to adolescent immaturity
can lead to bullying others with an arrogant disregard of facts or the realities of the surrounding community of countries.
A strong, impatient and self-opinionated minor prone to bullying invariably finds comeuppance. All countries in their life
cycles lose a fight they should not have instigated. Saturn's transit through Cancer, then Leo, and Virgo, in the coming four
years will see a few American thumpings by reality.

It will be a collective experience in the school of historic hard knocks for all those Americans who
elected Bush back in office. The same goes for all those who did not vote at all, and those in opposition who chose a mediocrity
to run against the president. The transit of Saturn could help them all learn, and become a better nation from their collective
mistakes.

The lessons of Saturn began in June 2003, when it entered the Sun sign of America--Cancer. The end
of June saw America establish an interim government in Iraq. Bush and his cabinet dreamed that a milestone had passed and
peace would settle on Iraq. Saturn soon upended dreams with reality. The violence of the Iraqi insurgency escalated instead.
Bush pledged in his first term to be a uniter. After Iraq, his dream has become the Saturnian reality that Americans at home
live in a national house divided into cultural and partisan camps of "blue-liberal" and "red-conservatives." Saturn here is
teaching the president and other Americans that they now belong to a dis-United States.

Life under Saturn in Cancer, on the one hand, can be a time of delays and postponement and on the other,
a time when confronting uncomfortable truths cannot be postponed. For instance, the Bush administration first tried to delay
and finally failed to suppress the formation of the 9-11 Commission that investigated what part the administration played
in the security failure that led to America's attack by terrorists on September 2001. It so happens that the 9-11 Commission
began its investigation shortly after Saturn entered the ruling sign of America. Half way through Saturn's transit, the commission
released its report at the worst of times for Bush, just before the presidential elections rather than after, as he desired.

At the beginning of Saturn's transit through Cancer, it began exposing other illusions in other investigations
the Bush administration could no longer suppress. Chief among these was the reality that weapons of mass destruction never
existed in Iraq. Thus, the grounds for going to war was an illusion. The war and the dying, and the loss of US prestige in
the world is based on either sheer incompetence, or fraud. For the sake of nonexistent WMD, so far 100,000 Iraqis have paid
the ultimate price. [Add to this 1,345 US, 260 Coalition forces killed, and nearly 10,000 confirmed wounded to date on 21
December]. Saturn in Cancer had exposed America's historic conceit--its rush to shoot first and check for reasons to go to
war later. Soon, it may very well lose them a war they never needed to fight.

A citizenry in collective denial is another aspect of Saturn transiting through the birth sign of a
nation. The people of America just did not want to deal with Iraq, with deficit spending, with a bungling presidency that
let terrorists fly right in to New York skyscrapers and the Pentagon. Even those in opposition to Bush's policies did not
rally behind reformers of their party. They did what people do under Saturn in Cancer, follow their leaders, follow the status
quo--postpone the debate, the reform, postpone facing facts.

Because Bush will be reelected this will be a sign to the world that Americans have not learned their
lesson, that unilateralism does not play well in the new global world. Saturn will push harder. The remaining seven months
of its transit through Cancer will see America further isolated from the family of nations. Alliances will weaken. American
troops will be virtually on their own in Iraq as it descends into civil war. The hemorrhage of outsourced American jobs will
continue to bleed. Rather than lead the world in cleaning the environment, America will lead the world in destroying it, setting
the stage for international sanctions against American products and polluting industries. The epicenter of global economy
will continue shifting to Europe and Asia. Americans could retreat into denial under a second Bush administration, hiding
in their Cancerian shells, projecting an illusion of how the world should be, and how it should give respect. They will resist
facing the world as it is, or face the reality that at present they do not deserve the world's respect or its compliance.

The challenges of Saturn in Cancer on a national scale require Americans face and transcend a desire
to isolate themselves as a country. Karma compels them to face their mistakes in global unilateralism and in Iraq, and take
stock of delusions of conceited grandeur. Americans must also stop living in denial that their economy and democracy are in
peril and in need of true reform.

The country under the transit of Saturn in Cancer suppresses a fearful, insecure and angry nation,
ready to explode. If we do not find a way to creatively release this pent up frustration the explosion will come in Saturn's
transit through Leo beginning in July 2005. The two-year passage could see American policy become even more bellicose, reactive
and self-righteously arrogant towards other nations. A gathering economic crisis over oil will come as early as next summer
(2005). The Bush administration will react rather than respond during such an emergency, becoming dictatorial. The president
will widen the war on terror rather than contain it. Hubris in the White House, talking to God, will not have eyes to "see"
or ears to "hear" that nuclear proliferation, like Iraq, could go out of control in the next four years. Once this window
of opportunity to stave the plague of atomic weapons is closed, destiny will play itself out in nuclear bush wars with third
world nuclear powers any time from late 2005 through the 2030s.

What is the president's response to this challenge? Apparently "God" has told him to scrap the ABM
treaty, seriously consider ignoring nuclear test ban treaties, and embark on his own nuclear proliferation campaign. Pentagon
research and development of low yield, bunker busting nukes are on the fast track in the next four years. Perhaps we will
see them "tested" on the subterranean nuclear facilities of North Korea and Iran sometime after summer of 2005.

Saturn transiting Leo is often the sign for war, or a sudden escalation of current wars. There is a
high chance of an Israeli-American air strike on Iran's nuclear power centers and missile defenses any time after mid-July
to October of 2005. It could also come later after the mid-term US elections in November 2006 through July of 2007.

North Korea's nuclear facilities may also come under attack in the first six months of 2006. A preemptive
strike on North Korea is less likely than Iran, unless Bush's higher "Father" tells him to destroy North Korea's missile bases
before they can arm their warheads with atomic bombs.

American sons and daughters will be drafted to bolster occupying forces in a widening war in the Middle
East no sooner than late 2005. They will go submissively the day the nation understands that the chaos in the Arab oil fields
threatens to undermine oil production and the American economy. American children will go to war, not because of weapons of
mass destruction, not because they are on a crusade to bring democracy to the Middle East. At last Saturn in Leo will expose
the real reason why this war was forced on the American people by the Bush Administration: they believe America must control
the oil regions or lose its affluent--oil effluent--way of life.

Saturn in volatile Leo wants to teach Americans a necessary lesson: Get real. Return to the path of
the just. Make practical changes in domestic and global policies. American opposition leaders need to appeal to the humble
angels of the American nature by the mid-term elections in 2006; otherwise, Saturn in Leo will spike national egoism breeding
a rush to confrontation and disaster. Politicians running for office in 2006 should call upon the voters to return to basic
American principles for justice, fair play, equal rights and representation for all. Strong third party movements, or reform
movements inside the existing two-party system, may help incline America's destiny towards following an accurate American
reality; namely, that we are a divided nation in need of healing. We are oil addicts that need to get clean. For instance,
if Americans get real about their fossil fuel addiction, they need not send their children to stain the sands of distant oil
fields with their blood. They can send them not far from home to galvanize a depressed domestic economy with a ten year plan
to modernize the US infrastructure, and maximize fuel efficiency.

Revive the "can do!" American spirit.

The people who could go to the Moon in ten years can solve problems, creating alternative energy sources
for fossil fuels and break free from an addiction for Middle Eastern oil. Americans have ever redefined themselves. They can
redefine their economies and redefine their American way of life once again for the better--for freedom's sake.

The right use of karmic Saturn in assertive Leo could give birth to this core change in America's destiny
any time from 2005 through 2007. The wrong use of Saturn in Leo will deepen the danger of fascism at home, addiction to fossil
fuels, and intensify acts of imperialism abroad. Americans could truly become for the first time, the "bad guys" in the world.

Let that not happen, America!

Saturn passes from Leo into Virgo in September of 2007. A majority of Americans will either throw blame
or be ready to creatively "discern" what has gone wrong since the pivotal election of 2000 led them astray.

American can put aside bullying when Saturn passes through Virgo and can again become a citizen in
the house of nations. To do this, enough American leaders and citizens will surely need to come to their senses in time.When
the next presidential election approaches, this country could be faced with perhaps its most dire crisis to date in this young
century.

At the onset of Saturn's transit through Virgo, in 2008, hotheads running the government of Taiwan
will attempt to declare permanent secession from the Chinese mainland. China's leaders, they believe, must make the Summer
Olympics China's international coming out party. What better time to declare independence when China would not dare invade
Taiwan and risk a global boycott of the games?

I tell you, little bureaucrats of Taiwan, China will invade you nonetheless if you secede. They will
do it "after" the Olympics are over in early September 2008. They will invade despite the proximity of US carriers in the
Western Pacific.

They will take Taiwan back, America. Are you--should you--be ready to go to war with China over it?
Shall your new Secretary of State Rice stay the hot passions of Taiwanese secessionists with tempered and skilled diplomacy
before the plunge?

Let me put it this way, in a variation of the Dillon song:

The future times, they "can" be a'changin', if Condi Rice, or more likely her replacement as Secretary
of State in the latter half of Bush's second term, is a real diplomat and not just playing the "mouth" of Bush Corp.

During these first difficult and Saturnian years of national adolescence Americans will have fallen,
stumbled and hurt themselves as a nation. These tough and necessary lessons could bring wisdom to an adolescent country. Perhaps
an older-yet-wiser America may yet fulfill what Nostradamus intimated in one of his prophecies. There is an alternative future
to a calamitous war "under Cancer"--the Sun sign of America. In Century 24 of Quatrain 6, Nostradamus may predict that Americans
after Bush's second term could "anoint" a new leader who will "bring peace to the earth for a long time."

The future is full of unexpected promise for this great nation. America's adolescent era may lead in
50 years to its loss of outer power and the prestige inherent in being the world's last true and global superpower. When the
fires of empire vanish, America will turn within. Its grandchildren and great-grandchildren will become introspective and
launch a spiritual revolution across the world.

This is not the end of America's glory, it is the beginning.

America's greatest destiny begins in the latter half of the 21st century when it will become the cradle
of a new religiousness in a New Age.